Love Your Home Business Partner

iHubbub has been completely intrigued with the all-essential ingredient into what makes or breaks couples who are living or working together?

Andrew Clover’s hilarious, and heart-stopping Learn Love In A Week was published on the 31st January and will teach you loads about love.

Andrew gave us a few pointers to help our members who have started a business and work from home together. Some say working and living together is a dream while others wouldn’t bet on it.

Who’s Queen?

Most relationships go bad, when the status is unclear. Everyone knows a bloke in the office, who sulks when he’s asked to do something, because he feels he should be in charge. Make sure that the roles are clear: everyone will be happier. It is true in work. It’s true in marriages.

The wedding ceremony has much to say about sharing your body, and your worldly goods but it says too little about bathtimes.

Who’s supposed to do them? And if the sink is leaking, who calls the plumber? In most relationships, one person does some of the jobs while the other does everything else, and they’re furious. But in most relationships, both partners contribute the same amount of time, and you won’t feel love till you stop keeping score. Some of iHubbub members had some interesting confessions in this regard.

Communicate

Whenever you read advice, you invariably read: ‘Talk about your feelings’. But there is no advice, more often misinterpreted. Every office has a woman who talks far too much, and I know at least five couples where the woman seems to have a phobia about letting her man talk, so he sits there, muzzled, like a bad dog that growled at the postman.

Let’s update this advice. If you’re a woman, make sure you’re listening. If you’re a man, make sure you’re being brave enough to state what you mean, quietly and clearly. Many men stay silent as snails.

Why?

Because they don’t want to be crushed. Some women tend to be so much more aggressive in winning arguments. Listen. Be gentle. That’s the way to lure the snail out.

Praise

It’s the most quoted study in relationship studies: Lyubomirsky’s observation that successful couples are those where the positive comments outweigh the negative, by three to one.In the toxic ones, the couples criticise each other as often as they praise.

It’s a bit like the key rule in John Gray’s Men Are From Mars: men like to feel they’re experts; they resent women who, they feel, are criticising their expertise. Women should back off, is Gray’s implication. Again ... I’d want to update. Women are criticising men’s expertise; men should try listening.

But the women would have a far higher success rate, if they sweetened the feedback with some positivity. And you can’t fake it. Everyone distrusts a flatterer. Some people begin: ‘You did well today’ and you’re just waiting for the ‘but…’ You won’t communicate effectively, unless you have a genuine appreciation of what the other person does well. Be specific.

Quote their joke, their wise observation: you’ll win them for life. I’ve got another tip that will make it far easier to be positive...

Don’t compare

‘If you compare yourself to others,’ says the old advice, ‘you will become vain and bitter.’ It’s certainly true. And a problem with modern life is that we’re endlessly invited to compare. Every city analyst knows where his team is, in the ranking of analysts. Every wife knows how much her neighbour’s house costs.

And all of us read magazines, in which we read of celebrities, who, apparently, earn millions, and look fantastic, and who are just so happy ‘because my friends keep me grounded.’ This is rubbish, and it’s toxic rubbish. People don’t stay grounded, because they’re not plants. And most celebrities don’t have friends. They’re far too busy. But yet everyone else reads about them, and feels inadequate.

Don’t compare. This will be much easier if you turn off the TV, the computer, and you shut the mag.

The secret to a successful partnership is having a proud sense that you have shared values.

Maybe you run an average home based business, and it’s clear you’ll never be the best. Fine. Maybe you design good gardens. Maybe you have good customer relationships. Be proud of that. And maybe you’re an average couple, averagely popular, less rich than others in the playground… What is it you do well? Discuss that together.

Be proud of that.

Play

For two years, I went round the country asking couples: ‘What’s the secret of staying together?’ The most common answer was: ‘Well… it does take a lot of work!’ This is not an inspiring suggestion. ‘That’s what I need,’ we think, ‘more work!’

Actually most couples don’t need more work, I reckon. What they need is more play. I’m not suggesting you play Scrabble, though you could. Actually play involves the other things we’ve mentioned – listening, concentrating on the strengths, being proud.

Every relationship has bad patches. But they have good ones too – times when you’re laughing at each other’s jokes, times when you’ve got a good Box Set on the go… Keep those times going.

Each relationship is a game! It’s a game of Frisbee, I reckon. It’s less fun when you’re making mean little offers - when you’re discussing what went wrong, what went right.

It’s more fun when you’re standing back, and you’re flinging the Frisbee vast distances on the breeze, because you trust each other, and because you know that, in life, you get back what you give out, and because you’re having fun.